₦airaland Forum

The Rivers State chapter of the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN has criticised its national leader and former governor of Lagos State, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, over his meeting with Governor Rotimi Amechi without recourse to the state executive members even as it sets up a two-man delegation to meet with the national officers of the party over their varying positions on the romance with the Rivers State governor.

A statement signed by ACN Publicity Secretary in the state, Jerry Needam, said a two-man committee comprising the state leader of the party, Dr Abiye Sekibo and Kenneth Kobani, the national treasurer, who is from the state, has been mandated to communicate its stands to the national party leader.

According to the statement, this is sequel to the state executive meeting of Sunday, May 2, 2013 which centered on the unilateral resolve by the ACN national leaders to identify with and work for the interest of Governor Amaechi, who it alleged “is entrapped in an intractable Peoples Democratic party, PDP, crisis that tends to consign him into political irrelevance.”

The party made some allegations against the state governor, who it said took many anti-democratic actions against its members.

“The state chapter of the party is aggrieved that Governor Amaechi, who has left no stone unturned in marginalising the opposition in the state, notably the ACN and that had unleashed all manners of persecution against the party and its members, including its state leader, Dr Abiye Sekibo, during and after the April 26, 2011 general elections, could easily warm himself into the party without the knowledge of the state chapter of the party.”

The Movement for the Actualisation of Sovereign State of Biafra, MASSOB, yesterday warned that it would not take lightly any attempt to undermine its June 8 sit-at-home directive in Imo State.

The group said the directive would afford Ndigbo the opportunity to critically reflect on their fate in the Nigerian project, especially over the suppression of the Igbo.

In a statement, the MASSOB Regional Administrator in Njaba Local Government Area of the state, Mr. Emmanuel Chukwudi Nwokeji, requested the Imo State residents, especially those living in Njaba to sit at home in protest against the unprovoked killings of Ndigbo in the North and other parts of the country.

He said: “This is in reaction to the continued killings of Ndigbo in Nigeria without regard to human life especially the killing of six Igbo youths in Abuja on June 8, 2005 and no justice has been done or the families compensated.”

Nwokeji explained that the directive by MASSOB, as a non-violent group, was a means of condemning the injustice and marginalisation meted out on Ndigbo.

He added that the sit-athome directive would send signal to Nigerian leaders that Ndigbo could still fight their continued marginalisation.

The regional administrator pointed out that the challenges faced by every Igbo man in Nigeria could not be addressed until Biafra Republic was actualised.

Determined to check the continued despoliation of the environment, the Federal Government yesterday said plans are underway to ban the use of plastic bags in the country. Minister of Environment, Mrs. Hadza Mailafia, who dropped the hint during the 2013 World Environment Day celebration in Abuja, said government would favour the use of paper bags in their place.

Mailafia, who said the ban would take effect from January 2014, also said the Federal Government was also considering banning the use of sachet water.

According to her, the move to ban the plastic bags are necessitated by the numerous health and environmental hazards associated with their use.

The minister noted that unlike the paper bags that could easily decompose, plastic bags are non-biogradable materials which could stay in the soil for years, contaminating water sources when washed into the rivers by the rain.

Relying on the Food and Agriculture Organisation, FAO’s, statistics, the environment minister said one-third of global food production is wasted from farm to stock which is equivalent to 1.3 billion tonnes of food annually; while an estimated 870 million people go hungry worldwide. She said more than 20, 000 children under the age of five also die daily from hunger.

The House of Representatives and the Consumer Protection Council, CPC, have launched an investigation into allegations of indiscriminate seizure of customers’ money by malfunctioning Automated Teller Machines, ATMs.

The probe came after the House Committee on Justice headed by Hon. Ali Ahmad (PDP-Kwara) adopted a petition from bank customers who thought the development could imperil the Central Bank of Nigeria’s cashless economy policy if not checked. The petition, according to Ahmad, states in detail how customers have been going through hard times in carrying out electronic transactions due to malfunctioning ATMs.

“The petitioner narrated how he went through due process by making formal complaint of reporting the non-dispensing of his money while his account was debited.

“He resorted to the petition and the House of Representatives’ intervention two months after the incident to curb further tactical manipulation of the banking system,” Ahmed said.

The lawmaker noted that withholding customers’ money for more than the stipulated period could not be condoned by parliament. The petition reads in part: “The banks would continue to indulge in this since there is no sanction to make banks responsible by ensuring that their ATMs are always in good condition.

“It may not be out of place that the trend might be deliberate, probably in a bid to use unsuspecting customer’s money to ease their (banks’) financial pressure. “This is because if all the incidences are recorded and the funds aggregated by all the banks, there is no doubt that we will be talking about millions of naira being deliberately denied customers while the banks are feeding fat on it.